I mailed Hiwatt UK today:
Hi Mark,
Bad news. The Hiwatt DR201 died today.
I'll try to mail you the facts as good as possible and maybe you or a technical employee knows what happened?
- I used the Hiwatt one time three hours for rehearsal without problems.
- I used the Hiwatt one time three hours for recording without problems.
- I used the Hiwatt for the video, but it wasn't switched on... Not even a mains cable.
Today I rehearsed again with it, so it was the third time I really used it. After like two hours playing on a normal volume the following happened:
- The sound suddenly stopped and I saw a small cloud of smoke above the second power tube from left, as seen from the front.
- The pilot lights of Mains and Standby were off. No lights anymore. The amp totally was like out of power.
- The amp wasn't hotter than normal. Not that hot at all.
- I smelled nothing strange, which is strange in itself because of this little cloud of smoke.
- The amp was at 8 Ohms and 230V, and it was connected to the Hiwatt cab with a good quality cable. I'm always very sure to check those things.
What I did:
- I checked the fuses visually. I have no devices to do that and I'm not very technical. The 5A was a glass one and that one was okay (visual check) and the other (3A) was a white plastic fuse which I couldn't visually check.
- I turned ALL the controls completely down. So Volume, gain, bass, treble, mid, presence everything. Just to check the fuses I switched the fuses. I plugged the mains cable in again and now both pilot lights came on again, but there was a very loud buzz. I switched the amp off again immediately and I went home to type this message.
Bad news, but maybe you know what happened? It could be a fuse, but the smoke is very worrying.
One more thing: Compared to the Orange AD200B the stand by switch of this amp has made a quite loud popping sound when turned on or off from the beginning. That worried me a bit too, cos the Orange was almost completly silent when switching to or from stand by.
Kind regards,
Chris